We can do without you, Wisconsin

Everyone said we made such a cute couple. We were two young northern states with our whole lives ahead of us. We would teach our children to be humble and polite and to properly field dress a buck. We would shovel neighbors’ sidewalks and praise the architectural merits of their ice fishing shacks. We would bring kindness to the small, stand tall against the mighty and arrogant. Should they ever invite us to supper, we vowed to always bring a subpar tuna hotdish.

Everyone admired us, Wisconsin. At least when they thought of us. Which wasn’t very often. But still.

For the next century and a half, ours was a marriage tilled with a GMO-free mixture of tenderness, good will, and a mutual affection for Germanic sausages. We were the progressive antidote to Kentucky and Tennessee — only better, because we didn’t procreate with immediate family.

But four years ago, things began to change, Wisconsin. You know it’s true. And it all started when you let that mean little man Scott Walker into our loving marital abode.

That’s when you decided to bust the unions, believing our economic collapse could be blamed on the guy who mows the lawn in the park. You cut education, fought gay marriage, rejected health care. You and Scott began spending all night in the garage, cranking Toby Keith and mumbling bitterly about how the Mexicans were taking all the best parking spots at Old Country Buffet.

You’d turned into North Mississippi.

There is still hope for reconciliation. Madison is a lovely liberal city; I refuse to believe that the cheeseheads will be bought by the Koch Brothers forever. So maybe they can get better.

I suppose, though, it’s also possible that Minnesota could tumble into the slime with Wisconsin — we do have our own home-grown lunatic Republicans who want to kill all Muslims and gays. But I’m sorry, Wisconsin, your affection is not important enough that we’d want to go down that path.

I’m afraid Minnesotans will still have to go to Wisconsin on Sundays to buy more booze. Make sure the driver for your beer run is sober, o.k.? Otherwise, don’t let the door hit you on the way out, and please, take that grape salad with you.

BTW, there’s an intelligent discussion to be had about off-Presidential election years, including Minnesota, where Mark Dayton barely won election as Governor back in 2010 and was the only thing that kept Minnesota from going down the same road as Wisconsin.

This is “Minnesota Nice” at its finest. Minnesotans love to mock people from other states. They have cheesehead jokes. They have Iowan jokes. They have Dakota jokes. This is why 4 out of 5 Great Lakes prefer Michigan.

The problem is that Wisconsin has been Democratically challenged for some time. I’m using capital-D Democratic to refer to the party, not the institution (however, one could reasonably argue both meanings are appropriate). Jim Doyle, the last Democratic governor was a dim-witted embarrassment. When Scott Walker ran 4 years ago, who did the party nominate? Tom Barrett (mayor of Milwaukee), the pastiest, most milquetoast politician ever. During the recall, who was the best they could find? Barrett again. At least this year we found a candidate with some curb appeal, but Burke cast enough doubts to be a truly strong candidate. The best Wisconsin Democrat, Feingold decided after 3 senate terms to retire from politics and I don’t blame him.

Well, Feingold didn’t retire from politics voluntarily, he lost his Senate seat in 2010.

Wisconsin Democrats have problems, but it has less to do with individual politicians and more to do with turnout in off-Presidential election years. Charismatic candidates are all well and good, but what’s more important is getting the base out consistently. The GOP does this by making sure their base is fed a steady diet of outrage via Fox News and AM talk radio. Democrats haven’t been able to match this overall effort and it’s a real handicap for them.

Some stereotypes never die, even if they are misleading or downright wrong. Th4e fact is that only 79.1% of Tennesseeans are descended from consanguinous coupling. On the other hand, seventeen percent sho do like them some watermelons.

Never quite understood why “#NotAllSoutherners” was any less worthy of scorn than “#NotAllMen”, especially given the common thread of feeling like victims while wielding vastly disproportionate power throughout history (due to the way representation is apportioned.

Uh… Chas was criticizing the dumbassery about incest in TN, not prefiguring some kind of agreement with Azkyroth that there’s nothing wrong with it. Even if you didn’t catch the sarcasm, it’s not likely Chas would’ve come up with the same confused fucking analogy as Azkyroth did.

And given Chas is an unremitting asshole in thread after thread, and there was no indicator whatsoever that this time it was sarcasm, fuck that. The failure mode of clever, and all. especially when you have long form.

Some stereotypes never die, even if they are misleading or downright wrong.

Taking that at face value, he’s saying right off the bat that they’re wrong and identifying them as stereotypes. If you then took his (almost certainly made-up) statistics at face value, it still has nothing to do with whatever bullshit Azkyroth’s peddling, but let’s leave that about your previous comment aside. I would think that them being probably made-up and worded ludicrously (“consanguin[e]ous” and “sho” for instance) is a pretty good indicator that he’s not being serious. Needless to say, you not looking for any indicators is different from there being none whatsoever.

You know what, I have very mixed emotions about the joke that is earning everyone’s ire.

For one, I don’t think joking about Southerners is punching down. The South is fucking loathsome, powerful, and has plenty of elements that deserve exposure and mockery.

It’s the incest as a joke that is problematic. Why? Well, the waters are particularly murky on the subject. Consider:

1. Most incest is rape. A lot of this inherent to the power dynamics of the family itself, while age differences also factor in.

2. Incest is taboo. Even incest between consenting, fully loving, fully informed adults is stigmatized. The concern is largely attributed to the genetic issues that might arise if they had a child together, but even if they had intention of bearing children, people are too obsessed with the Ickiness and the gut feeling of Wrong that they can’t to the fact that there is no harm being done.

So why do I feel that mocking Southerners by implying they are incestuous is terrible? Not because it insults Southerners. The South is odious as shit, and you should be willing to own that if you live there, just like I own the fact that I am American and I think America as whole is a fucking mess and international menace. No, the problem is that it continues a weird trend of both belittling incest, making people who were victimized by family members feel even shittier, while still stigmatizing incest, in such a way that makes family members (often, usually only technically “family”) with otherwise perfectly harmless mutual sexual attraction to one other be treated like freaks. All while, of course, linking BOTH to lower class families. That is NOT a joke that should be repeated, over and fucking over, in good conscience.

Reading some comments, especially those about The South instead of, for example, particular southern states, sounds like The South is some sort of monolith. All the same. All bad, those down there. Not like those other states where everything is in working order. Well, there’s an occasional extremist, but those are just outliers, not like The South.

Wisconsin has an alcoholism problem, in addition to it’s problems with the Koch brothers getting the vile scum Scott Walker elected. I think MN should just annex western WI since it’s population is mostly Minnesotan in the first place and be done with the drunk assholes. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/us/16wisconsin.html

Um, Missouri is part of the rebel south. Ignorance, racism, and religion are it’s hallowed traditions. You will find more progressive attitudes in and around the college towns, but for the most part the racist south is a very real thing that is causing problems for the rest of the country.

None of that has anything to do with the idea that WI+MN has no incest while TN+KY does, nor any of the points anteprepro raised about how problematic this conception of incest is in the first place: as a weapon to use against some vaguely-defined group of people, for all of the other things they all supposedly and stereotypically do which are wrong.

The other problem with incest jokes about southern states is that they’re not about “The South”, they’re about Appalachia and in particular, Appalachian people. I live in a a city close enough to Appalachia that Appalachians are actually recognized here as minority group that has been subject to discrimination. The people being made fun of are among the persistently poorest in the country. They’re made fun of for being stupid when their schools have been at least as under-resourced as urban schools, when they’ve sent generations of kids into the mines or the fields instead of to school because they had to eat. So yeah, it’s punching down. Tell me you’re really picturing the Southern ruling class whose fortunes were made by slavery, or who used racism and fear to demagogue over their poor white constituents.

As a Southerner, I’ll be the first to admit that the South is a shit-hole in terms of -isms. I’ve been planning my escape from this cesspit as long as I can remember (and since I’ve never ventured outside its borders, I can’t really compare it to any other region, so maybe it’s just wishful thinking on my part that other parts of the country/world are better). It’s unfortunate that (the majority of) Southerners have ruined the region’s reputation such that bystanders get lumped in with their idiocy (although nobody has ever discriminated against me in any meaningful for stemming from the South). What is even more unfortunate, however, is that this vocal segment has actually tangibly ruined (or even literally ended) people’s lives with their prejudices. In terms of landscape, the South has beautiful scenery, and I’ll miss that, but the toxic attitudes make the South uninhabitable for large swathes of the population that simply want to live out their lives. Just yesterday one of my friends was accosted by strangers who demanded to know if she was “an illegal” (she is a US citizen, of course, and you can guess what foolproof criteria they used to single her out). So it’s a shame if Wisconsin decided to follow that path.

I didn’t say anything about the incest derail. I am a Minnesotan, and the casual racism and general backwardness of the south is a real thing that shocks the hell out of me every time I encounter it. I never considered Missouri the south until my male parent moved there specifically for the racist backwards culture, which IME, correlates quite well with cotton fields. The Southern strategy is a real thing.

It’s not a derail. This original topic of the fucking thread involves a fuckload of stereotypes, incest being one of them. Anthropomorphizing a fucking state or an entire geographical region is pretty much guaranteed to do that.

I am a Minnesotan, and the casual racism and general backwardness of the south is a real thing that shocks the hell out of me every time I encounter it.

Damn, so you’re just saying “stereotypes are real”? Or is it only when you talk about “the south”?

I never considered Missouri the south until my male parent moved there specifically for the racist backwards culture, which IME, correlates quite well with cotton fields. The Southern strategy is a real thing.

You were the first to mention Missouri. I’m still trying to figure out that non sequitur. (There’s little or no cotton production in MO, by the way, so you put this supposed correlation in a pretty silly spot.) The same goes for the Southern Strategy. That actually does look like a giant derail to me, so I won’t bother.

Incest is not mentioned in the OP at all, it’s just yet one more grudge match between Chas and Caitiecat. I ain’t touching that with a 98 1/2 foot long pole. Beatrice is complaining that calling the south racist is an awful stereotype, She is wrong, as the Southern strategy is a real thing that depends on racism and ignorance to exist.

(There’s little or no cotton production in MO

Sorry CR, but there are in fact acres and acres of cotton grown in Missouri, unless all those farmers are lying when I ask what they grow in those burned over fields. East St. Louis and Ferguson stand in direct contrast to anyone who wants to claim that the southern states aren’t racist as fuck. The incest thing is BS, but the racist regressive south is not a stereotype.

We were the progressive antidote to Kentucky and Tennessee — only better, because we didn’t procreate with immediate family.

In other words, incest. Did you miss that part?

Beatrice is complaining that calling the south racist is an awful stereotype, She is wrong, as the Southern strategy is a real thing that depends on racism and ignorance to exist.

For fuck’s sake, this is just incoherent. A strategy is not a geographical or political entity.

Sorry CR, but there are in fact acres and acres of cotton grown in Missouri, unless all those farmers are lying when I ask what they grow in those burned over fields.

I don’t know “all those farmers.” Look at the distribution on this 2012 map. Now tell me whenever you say “Missouri,” that’s what you mean. And what this has to do with anything else we’re discussing actually.

I spent 17 years living in central Arkansas from age 5 until I graduated undergrad. I know the South has serious problems with racism along with other issues and can generally be a shit place to live if you’re not white, cis, straight and male. In my experience, the main issue I have with “the South is so racist” jokes and jokes like them isn’t punching down or treating the south like it’s all one thing. The problem is that the jokes are not just “the South is racist,” the jokes are, either consciously or unconsciously, “the South is the racist part of America” jokes. The stereotype of the South as the terrible racist awful shithole of America is used as a way for people who don’t live in the South to excuse or ignore their own racist issues. It allows people who live elsewhere to think it’s not a problem that people of color are 2x more likely to get pulled over in their town because at least they don’t live in Mississippi so it’s not like they are racist or anything. Look at the Stop and Frisk shitshow that’s happening in New York, that is about as not-the-south as you can get and they have huge problems with racism. I’m not trying to say that the South isn’t racist or even that the South isn’t as racist as its reputation, but that these jokes are used to try and confine racial tensions in America to one geographic region so that people in other states can ignore issues in their vicinity.

More on the specific line in the post, incest jokes are shit full stop. Jokes about incest in the South/ Appalachia are 100% about making fun of someone because they are poor. No one imagines Colonel Sanders-esque figures when they are making a joke about people in the south being incestuous. At best they are shitty classist jokes and at worst they are shitty classist rape jokes.

I know you don’t like football and neither do I. However I saw a T-shirt in the Minneapolis airport: “I have two favorite teams, the Vikings and anyone who beats the Packers”. But the Packers are the only truly fans’ team. It is not owned by some billionaire, but by its fans. So there is no individual that can decide to up and move the team. Sounds like socialism?

I am from Wisconsin but I would be a Packers fan anyway just for that reason.

I’m a Southerner who just moved to Wisconsin and HOLY SHIT is there lots of racism. I’ve had to grade papers with far more racism than I ever saw in the South. Everyone will turn into red-eyed black people and cause the apocalypse because of miscegenation. Calling anyone black “colored” or “negro”. Encouraging segregation because black people just are too different and are animals. We should publicly execute black men who commit crimes to “teach them a lesson”. Saying that school systems should be underfunded because ‘good students’ (white kids) don’t go to public school. But, whatever. Because it isn’t the South, it must not be racist right?

I remember reading somewhere that this isn’t Wisconsin’s first round of generally corrupt right-wing politicians. Apparently about once in a lifetime, Wisconsin voters decide to let a bunch of these nitwits in, then have to do a bunch of work to kick them out again.

(Not unlike war, really — distributed in history exactly as far apart as it takes for people to forget how terrible the last one was…)